Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.

• Author: Brady, Gordon L.

Elinor Ostrom's book is based on exhaustive, detailed, and original research dealing with the management of water as a resource distinguished by use and scale of the resource. It is a scientifically grounded examination of the effects of institutions to "cope" with the "common property resource" (CPR) problem. Ostrom's book is part of a series of Cambridge University Press books on the political economy of institutions and decisions. The focus of the series is on the central questions: (1) how do institutions evolve in response to individual incentives, strategies, and choices?; and (2) how do institutions affect the performance of political and economic systems'?

The book is timely, well-written, and a useful addition to our understanding of the challenges of natural resource management. It is based on case studies which attempt to identify the elements that lead to the survivorship over time of water management institutions. Case studies incorporating extended fieldwork were selected using the following criteria: (1) the structure of the resource management system; (2) the attributes and behavior of the appropriators (defined as those who obtain the benefits) of the CPR; (3) the rules that the appropriators were using; and (4) the outcome resulting from the behavior of the appropriators.

Building on the author's 40 years of academic and applied work with institutional design, this book reports the results of a project involving the development of a structured coding form that enabled the transformation of in depth qualitative data into a data base amenable to quantitative analysis. The book is disciplined by Ostrom's conviction that knowledge accrues by the continual process of moving "back and forth" from empirical observation to serious efforts of theoretical formulation. The author describes the book as a "progress report" for an ongoing research effort to refine concepts, develop models, design instruments and experiments, and search for better variables to capture the information under review. This book meets all of the author's objectives and provides a wealth of unique perspectives on resource management. For example, the author's analysis adds the wider perspectives of credibility, commitment, mutualities, sharing, and the process of institutional change in the study of the CPR problem.

The book is divided into six chapters with an exhaustive reference section of 25 pages at the end of the book. Chapter 1, "Reflections on the...